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Pure potential and the trouble with patience

Aside Athousandbitsofpaper20 Comments

If I were to write a poem about this day
It would not be autobiographical
I was not here
My mind elsewhere
Floating free from all that bothered me
I was the hawk that hovered
A wildflower plucked
The tree which I leaned against as I ate my lunch
I tipped my head back
Stared at the sky
And I dreamt in colours
That sparked rainbows behind my eyelids
If I were anything I chose today
I was light
and then I receded
Was I awake
Or still sleeping?
Some days we just never know
And I guess these are the days we grow
Unencumbered by our usual limitations

*There are days when potential is pure, untapped. We can feel that if we just knew who it was we wanted to be, we could be anything

Or anyone

I get this feeling when I’m travelling on a motorbike in the middle of nowhere. I feel my consciousness soaring up to a higher perspective, looking down at this tiny person, a dot in the arid landscape. It’s a little bit scary, the vulnerability, but within the fragility is a feeling of being everyone and nobody.

Or rather, anybody

And if you are any body – you could be anyone.

And who would that be, if you could just become anything?

We live within such tight parameters of all we know about ourselves, and all others know about us. And yet like the known universe – there are vast areas left to discover.

How awful to die without at least attempting to explore further outside our own known terrain

People grow to limits set by their own idea of who they are. But how do we know who we are if we haven’t first discovered all of the things which we are not?

And that takes time and courage and also a certain amount of curiosity, but it is sad to wait too long, because think of the years that are lost not doing a thing that you later find you love

I think of people who have carried out the same monotonous routine all their lives who retire, and then, with more time on their hands begin to dabble in other things. The 70 year old who discovers a latent talent for art, the 64 year old who develops an interest in bee keeping. The man whose more conservative wife dies, who begins to cover himself in tattoos (true story I read an article about him). A woman who always wanted to ride and buys a motorbike at 69 and then begins to tour.

All those years that they could have been doing these things they love to do

But they just didn’t know it

I don’t know why we wait so long to find out what we love

I’m just not someone who is patient

Header photo: Eric Masur Unsplash

20 thoughts on “Pure potential and the trouble with patience”

  1. I can definitely not wait that long to do what I love. I put myself last for so long, I’m finally learning to put myself first and do what makes me happy. Lovely poem and post.

    Reply

    • I’m glad you are doing what makes you happy Pooja, so many people do not even know where to begin to look. Then once they know, inexplicably they wait. Others as Rosaliene said, don’t find the opportunity. I think if we know, and we have the opportunity, we are fools for not trying.

      Reply

      • I couldn’t agree more, if you know what makes you happy, do it. Don’t wait because you don’t know how much time you have.

    • I love this,
      “I’m that woman who climbed the mountain of life,
      removing stones and planting flowers.”

      You are right Rosaliene, there are many who must put aside their creative pursuits and dreams in order to survive. I’m grateful Cora was able to publish her work. Her story is a reminder that if we have the ability to follow our dreams we should take it wit both hands and do so, appreciating the fact that our time is limited and it is not an opportunity afforded to everyone.

      Reply

      • Of course you should push forward with your writing Rosaliene, you are a wonderful writer. We cannot all be famous and receive an income from our writing, but I don’t think that is the point of doing it, we have something to say, something that wants to be said, so we write. I think of the many wonderful writers that could have given up and didn’t, I think of the many that remained obscure in their lifetime perhaps but then became well known. We don’t know where our words go, or who they touch. But they won’t have a chance to do anything if we leave them unsaid and unwritten. I’m trying to remember this as I am at the early stages of my book where it is just as easy to not write it and very difficult to get momentum going. Self doubt is a self defeating force of uselessness that I have to climb over all the time. It’s so hard. But as the saying goes – if it were easy everyone would do it.

  3. Wow and hmmm , beautifully said. Yes, finding the flow then allowing ourselves to just be in the moment, without expectations judgement comparisons. A continuous excerise i find myself practising. Getting gradually better at it.

    Hope you don’t mind i sometime flow via poem writing. I had forgotten i had written previous years. So now , just written this :-
    (A little moment i do see
    A little moment i do feel
    A little moment of just be ,

    Thoughts may come,
    Thoughts may go
    Thoughts may be still,

    There’s the treasure,
    Neither here,
    Neither there,
    Just the moment of ‘just be’ )

    Best wishes to all

    Reply

  5. As always, Kate, your words make my head and heart nod in agreement. I’ll never understand it. I’m the “misfit” of the family. My twin, my Mom~they’ve lived in the same house, driving the same route A to B,…I’m a dreamer with my head I’m the clouds of what I can STILL do and love. I am not judging what others do. I’m simply curious as to why? Why not dream? Fear? Control? I’ll not understand it. They are now encircled by more anxiety with my situation and I’m still the one dreaming and floating above the skies. Sending love and hugs for being YOU. Oh, how I needed this. 💛 X

    Reply

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